Did Everyone Take Stupid Pills This Week?

There seems to be a concerted effort this week to prove that the Republican Party really is the Stupid Party. There were lots of people Tuesday night saying that they hoped that after the convincing win in the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney would avoid saying something stupid the next morning to blunt his momentum. So instead of doing it himself, like any good private sector executive that I hear he once was, he delegated the job to his communications director, who obliged with Etch-a-Sketch-Gate. Romney says he enjoys firing people who perform their jobs poorly. Well . . . how about showing us?

But not to be outdone, Rick Santorum demonstrated why he acquired the reputation as one of the U.S. Senate’s least likeable members during his two terms by suggesting that if Romney is the nominee, we might just as well stick with Obama because Romney is virtually the same guy. Look, I get how the burning ambition for office makes you swing wildly at your opponent, but please don’t insult our intelligence.

Finally, Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, says he will vote against the Ryan budget because it doesn’t go far enough in cutting spending. This is frivolous political immaturity of the first order. NRO’s Avik Roy points out that Republicans have a very narrow margin on the Ways and Means Committee, and if just two other Republicans defect (citing their purity), the Ryan budget will go down, with no prospect that a tougher budget plan could ever pass the House, let alone even a Republican Senate. Why do these purist Republicans want to make the Democrats’ job easier?

This is the same kind of logic as the purist Abolitionists in the 1850s who thought Lincoln insufficiently robust in his anti-slavery positions, and wanted to expel the South rather than have “union with slaveholders.” Gee–that would have served the interest of freeing the slaves real well.